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4 April 1992

Brazilian engineers and builders have been coming in for a bit of stick
over their preparations for the Earth Summit in June. As In Brief reported
on 7 March, there are rumours that work on the conference centre for the
summit is seriously behind schedule. Meanwhile, there has been a less than
rapturous reception to the completion of a spanking new motorway linking
Rio de Janeiro airport to the city centre, which is due to open just before
the summit begins.

The reason is that one of the elevated sections of the road passes just
60 centi-metres from the buildings which line the route. You might have
thought that politicians would want to avoid drawing attention to this,
but Rio’s governor, Leonel Brizola, has done just that. On a recent visit
to the site, he was photographed shaking hands with the resident of a third
floor flat of one of the buildings. Brizola was standing on the flyover,
and the resident was inside her flat.

Perhaps Governor Brizola had other things on his mind at the time. Last
month, police foiled a kidnap attempt on Jeffrey Peterson, the US vice-consul
in Rio. The group that ambushed Peterson at gunpoint were political opponents
of Brizola’s. Their aim was to create such adverse publicity abroad that
the UN would be forced to transfer the Earth Summit away from Rio, causing
Brizola to be discredited and ousted from office.

Hosting an international environment conference is no easy matter these
days.

* * *

Good news for ‘New Men’. Caring, sensitive males exist in the animal
kingdom, too. Take the example of the hip-pocket frog. While most male animal
species leave their young after birth, male hip-pocket frogs guard their
mates’ spawn until tadpoles emerge. They then incubate the tadpoles in special
skin pouches until they turn into froglets.

A research team has been studying this behaviour in the rainforests
of Australia. They want to learn how being brought up by a tender nurturing
male parent influences sexual selection and affects evolution. Male chauvinists
of the human species await the results with bated breath.

* * *

The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims for the Paranormal
has been having a tough time with the law in the US recently, and is currently
involved in four lawsuits. CSICOP’s magazine Skeptical Inquirer is surprised
to find itself in hearty agreement with Vice-President Dan Quayle, who asked,
in a recent speech, ‘Does America really need 70 per cent of the world’s
lawyers?’ and who went on to question whether the US economy benefited from
the estimated 18 million new litigation cases started each year.

* * *

The problem of excessive litigation is one that Greenpeace in Britain
may also be reflecting on as it ponders its current legal difficulties with
the National Rivers Authority. Last year, Greenpeace began a High Court
action against the NRA, claiming that the authority had failed to fulfil
its statutory duty as a regulator of water pollution in regard to discharges
from a chemicals company in northwest England. Now it has decided to call
a halt to the legal proceedings.

Fine, says the NRA, but it will cost you. Greenpeace, it is suggesting,
ought to shell out up to £100 000 for NRA’s expenses in preparing
the case.

Greenpeace is resisting this. It says it dropped the action because
the company involved had decided to clean up its act. According to the NRA,
this is the result of negotiations with the company before Greeenpeace turned
litigious. But Greenpeace says the prospect of court action concentrated
the firm’s mind wonderfully.

Will there now be a court case about calling off the court case? This
one could run and run.

* * *

The next time you are using the in-flight, dial-anywhere satellite telephone
service on an aeroplane, don’t be surprised if you find the plane’s captain
queuing up to use it after you. According to Pilot magazine, airline staff
are getting increasingly envious that while ‘the punters’ can chat away
on the phone to their granny or bookmaker as though they were in the next
room, flight-deck crews have to contend with the crackle and hiss of radio
for their communication with air-traffic control. One disgruntled pilot
said that he felt like going back into the plane and getting on the phone
to ask for permission to land.

* * *

It doesn’t just happen to homeowners. Even mega-high-tech construction
projects such as the European Synchrotron Radiation Source in Grenoble suffer
from cowboy builders. The giant machine is designed to produce finely tuned
beams of intense X-rays experiments, so it must stand on a completely stable
surface. But engineers in charge of the project have discovered that the
concrete floor of the experimental hall has not been laid properly; the
3-metre-square slabs are on a tilt. ‘It’s a real botched-up job,’ said one
official.

* * *

One of the 227 items which spewed out of the government’s publicity
machine in three days when the date of the election was announced was the
promise of a survey of road users.

According to transport secretary Malcolm Rifkind, the survey will establish
‘what road users want from the road network and how we can provide a better
service on the nation’s motorways and trunk roads’. In other words, it’s
all about helping drivers with contraflows and cones.

But what about the pedestrians trying to cross the road? What can these
road users expect from the survey?

Here’s a clue: drivers are generally an affluent sector of the community
(hushed voice-over: Conservative?). Pedestrians are often from the lower-income
classes (hushed voice-over: Labour?).

As for cyclists. . .

* * *

We can also exclusively reveal that the government is planning the most
draconian cutbacks yet in our railway services/ The evidence? The publication
of British Rail’s “Passenger’s Charter”. In the singular.